Abstract
In recent years, researchers have brought into question the construct validity of the available scales to measure procrastination. Among the instruments assessing procrastination, the Pure Procrastination Scale (PPS) has gained considerable attention from the research community. However, diverging results from past research on the PPS have raised several unanswered questions that are critical to the understanding, operationalization, and assessment of procrastination. This study draws from past research and aims to further investigate the psychometric properties of the PPS. First, this study tests the hypothesis that item responses can be explained by a general factor using bifactor modeling. Second, this study uses the Rasch model to study the psychometric properties of each item of the PPS. Finally, this study sought to create cutoff scores to discriminate between low, medium, and high levels of procrastination on the PPS. The sample was comprised of 934 French-speaking university students. Results showed that the bifactor model had better fit statistics across all indices. At the item level, results from the Rasch model showed that the PPS provides relatively little information for participants with low and high attribute levels whereas the PPS provides great levels of information for participants in the middle range of the attribute. Finally, cutoff scores were created and converted into raw scores to facilitate their use among researchers and clinicians.
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Gagnon, J., Peixoto, E.M. & Dionne, F. Further study of the measurement of procrastination: Using item response theory on the pure procrastination scale. Curr Psychol 41, 2868–2875 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00796-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00796-z